Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, Daughter Am I, More Deaths Than One, and A Spark of Heavenly Fire. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”

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What, in your opinion, are the essential qualities of a good story?

July 17, 2012 — Pat Bertram

The most important quality of a good story is the ability to take readers somewhere else and make them glad they went. It’s also essential to make the writing easy to read, which means the writing must be grammatically correct. Nothing takes an experienced reader out of a story faster than having to decipher convoluted sentences with improper punctuation. Ideally, a story should leave readers a bit better off than they were before, either because of what they learned about the world and themselves, or because of the respite from their everyday lives.

Here are some responses from others authors about the essential qualities of a good story. The comments are taken from interviews posted at Pat Bertram Introduces . . .

In my opinion a good story has conflict throughout and characters the reader will care about. I don’t believe the story, what happens to the characters is nearly as important has how these events impact the character’s lives, how they’ve evolved and grown, or in some instances, how they’ve stuck to their principles and are not changed by events in the story. An example of this type of story would be the movie High Noon.

A good story is about style, the style it is written in makes it unique and second is to make the reader care about your characters. Without empathy for your characters readers won’t care what happens to them. Once they care, you can really rev things up. I think it is all in the way you tell the story and how the characters come to life. Write about what you know, add in touches from your life and real people and it will come to life.

So, what, in your opinion, are the essential qualities of a good story?

7 Responses to “What, in your opinion, are the essential qualities of a good story?”

I agree with you that the journey is important. In my novel, Ghost Dance, there is the quest. It has always been the mainstay of western style literature and I think it always will be. With novels that I have really enjoyed there is the not wanting it to end and, at the same time, the belief that it has ended well. You need characters that readers can and will care about. Sometimes the conflict isn’t with people but the elements or with technology gone wrong. For example, a passenger plane is struck by a smaller plane. Both pilots are dead and it is up to the air hostess to try to bring the plane in for a landing despite the fact that she has had no pilot training and the aircraft is far from being in a sound condition. Some years ago when I was young there was the true story about a small boy who had wandered off and was lost in the bush. He had to be found within three days or he would not survive. There’s drama for you and no human villain around. Writing about what you know is always good advice. I know history to some extent. I also know what working in an office in Sydney, Australia in the 1990s was like because I was there. Desk Job, my latest novel, has fantasy elements but it is strongly based on what I know. Yes I would also say that making the writing easy to read is also a good point. Right now I am reading Ragtime and what I would like to cry out to the writer is this: “Would it have killed you to have broken up the pages with more paragraphs?” My thoughts at any rate.

I just read Fifty Shades of Grey and am totally stuck for an answer. I would think good writing, but apparently not. I would think well-rounded characters and unpredictable forward motion, but apparently not. Gads, I’m not kidding. If this book is any indication of what to write to make millions, then I’m not going to make it.

I was just saying who the book was aimed at. I’m a man so it was never going to be my cup of tea even if it did turn out to be brilliant. If the book was boring then it was boring. Some times the same old same old sells and there’s no accounting for taste.

One thing that can be important and people seem to often overlook are names. Character names can make or break a story. I had one that I tried out of stubborness to finish and just couldn’t. The book had other issues, but almost every time a character’s name was mentioned it was a “?!” moment because the names were so wierd – and not in an exotic name way. (and this was published by a big publishing house and sold at Wal-Mart)

Books by Pat Bertram

Grief: The Great Yearning is not a how-to but a how-done, a compilation of letters, blog posts, and journal entries Pat Bertram wrote while struggling to survive her first year of grief. This is an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.

When twenty-five-year-old Mary Stuart learns she inherited a farm from her recently murdered grandparents -- grandparents her father claimed had died before she was born -- she becomes obsessed with finding out who they were and why someone wanted them dead.

In quarantined Colorado, where hundreds of thousands of people are dying from an unstoppable, bio-engineered disease, investigative reporter Greg Pullman risks everything to discover the truth: Who unleashed the deadly organism? And why?

Bob Stark returns to Denver after 18 years in SE Asia to discover that the mother he buried before he left is dead again. At her new funeral, he sees . . . himself. Is his other self a hoaxer, or is something more sinister going on?

Thirty-seven years after being abandoned on the doorstep of a remote cabin in Colorado, Becka Johnson returns to try to discover her identity, but she only finds more questions. Who has been looking for her all those years? And why are those same people interested in fellow newcomer Philip Hansen?